Venovate Advisors

Venovate Advisors

"Will I outlive my money?"

For most people, the key wealth management question is not "Can I beat the market?" Instead, the more relevant concern is “Will I outlive my money?”

Likewise, the greatest investing risk is not market volatility. Instead, it is human behavior – fear and greed – which cause many individual investors to significantly underperform the market.

Venovate Advisors practices behavioral investment management and uses Asset Class Investing strategies to help people manage their core wealth by constructing a portfolio designed to last a lifetime.

Concerned about your retirement?

We’ll be happy to check your portfolio, and give you a free second opinion.

Asset Class Investing

Balancing goals and risks

Asset Class Investing

Balancing goals and risks

At Venovate Advisors we build core portfolios for our clients based on the principles of Asset Class Investing.

Grounded in modern portfolio theory and the research of leading economists such as Nobel laureates Harry Markowitz and Eugene Fama, Asset Class Investing recognizes that you can’t beat the market on a risk-adjusted basis.

Instead of chasing returns, we focus on reaching your goals by designing portfolios that let the market work for you without taking excess risk.

Our philosophy has three basic principles:

1. Efficiency

Markets are efficient. This means that, at any given moment, the prices of publicly traded securities are fair.

Any long-term differences in average portfolio returns are the result of differences in average risk.

In other words: it is possible to outperform markets, but you can’t do it without taking additional risk.

The objective is to reach your goals with an acceptable level of risk.

2. Risk

Some risks are worth taking. For example, more than 50 years of data and research indicate that stocks are riskier than bonds, but they also have higher expected returns.

Small cap and value stocks have outperformed other equities over time because the market discounts their prices to reflect their higher risk.

This discount gives them greater upside potential in return for the additional risk.

3. Diversification

Diversification helps control the risks not worth taking.

A carefully constructed global portfolio spanning asset classes, fixed income maturities, and geographical regions can capture the factors that generate returns while reducing those risks that usually go unrewarded.

Diversification will not eliminate the risk of market loss, but it can reduce the risk of individual securities while capturing returns attributable to broad economic forces.

No advisor can guarantee success, but we believe Asset Class Investing is a prudent, strategic approach based on sound academic research.

It is not about beating the market. It is designed to help you understand the risks required to reach your goals and build a portfolio you can stick with in good times and bad.

It combines the latest thinking in economics and investing with Professor Meir Statman’s in-depth studies of investor psychology and behavior.

This disciplined, structured approach helps protect you against the common behavioral mistakes that are the worst enemy of your long-term financial goals.

Wealth Management Process

Six steps to a tailor-made portfolio

Wealth Management Process

Six steps to a tailor-made portfolio

You would never ask a doctor “What’s a good drug to take?” Yet people routinely ask advisors “What should I invest in?”

Just as a doctor would not prescribe a treatment without a thorough exam, we need to understand your circumstances before we can even begin to create a portfolio. Our wealth management process consists of the following six phases.

1. Engagement

In our first meeting we’ll get to know each other. We need to understand what you want from an advisor and what your personal goals are. We will also explain how we work, what we can - and can’t - do for you, and how we charge. We’ll both decide if we want to work together.

2. Discovery

Over the next few weeks we will gather data about you to understand your financial circumstances, and both your willingness and ability to assume financial risk. This might be in one meeting or in several.

3. Analysis

Next, we do our homework and prepare a plan. We’ll analyze your data and create a proposal.

4. Presentation

We will meet again to deliver our proposal and explain it to you. If adjustments are needed, we’ll make them. Once you agree with the plan, there will be papers to sign so we can move forward.

5. Implementation

We will orchestrate a team at Charles Schwab and Loring Ward who will open the necessary accounts, ensure the paperwork is in order, move your funds and securities as directed, and put your new portfolio in place. We will rebalance when necessary, rarely more than twice a year, and send you quarterly performance reports. You will also receive statements from your custodian at least quarterly.

6. Monitoring

This is where behavioral investment advising comes in. You’ll have a plan in place to meet your goals, but will you stick to it? Many individual investors fall prey to panic when the market drops or exuberance when the latest bubble is building. Both can derail your plan.

Our role as trusted advisors is to help you manage your behavior as well as your money. We’ll meet at least once a year to discuss your progress toward your life goals and determine if portfolio adjustments are needed. However, our real value is as a sounding board and thought partner to help you stay focused on your goals and plan – not the latest fad or scare.

Venovate Holdings is the parent company of Venovate Advisors, LLC (“Venovate Advisors”) and Venovate Marketplace, Inc. ("Venovate Marketplace"). Venovate Holdings, Venovate Advisors, and Venovate Marketplace are separate but affiliated companies. Venovate Advisors is a Registered Investment Advisor in the state of California. All securities and investment products are offered by Venovate Marketplace, a registered broker-dealer with FINRA and member of SIPC.